Mother of Endings: Red Robe's Unmasking
by Timeandvlove
Summary: After defeating the Primordial, Demon King, High Witch and High Mage of Eldemar, the party decides to finally unmask the dread figure and time looper that has been hounding them. Many one shots.
1. Chapter 1

This is a crack fic about the awesome fiction, mother of learning by nobody103. Any resemblance to the actual plot or reality is accidental. The endings are listed in rough order of plausibility.

* * *

The burnt husk of the dead primordial smoked, tentacles scorched and burnt by the angelic fire which still danced golden over the terrible flesh. Zorian clenched Quatach-Ichl's phylactery in his hand. It briefly resisted him then crushed under the weight of his power. He tossed the remains into the nearby bush.

Zach lay collapsed on the ground next to the dragon troll corpse of Sudomir Kandrei, breathing heavily and covered in wounds from the fight, laughing.

"We did it. We finally did it!"

Enthusiastic Seeker of Novelty nodded, the hive mind of the Aranea channeled through her expendable and eager body controlling her mounted grey hunter which repeatedly stabbed Silverlake, her newly immortal body no match for the magic disrupting powers of the hunter, and sent a mental enthusiastic laugh to Zorian.

"This is so much fun!"

Xvim Chao stood over the corpse of Vatimah Tinc, head of the Mage Guild and the Esoteric Order of the Celestial Dragon which had led the invasion of Cyoria, who had finally managed to increase the size of his manhood with the aid of the freed primordial in the form of a twenty foot spiked tentacle, but that hadn't been enough to defeat Xvim.

"Enthusiasm is no substitute for practice." Xvim said.

Alanic nodded solemnly, still channeling that terrible fire into the body of the demon king that had once served the gods and fled with their power, chanting dark chants that Zorian… well, he shouldn't be surprised that someone with Alanic's history knew, binding the terrible spirit to keep it from ever troubling mankind again.

"All loose ends wrapped up except one."

Zorian looked down at the bound Red Robe. The other time looper. His identity had been a mystery for so long and finally it was time to discover who Red Robe really was.

He reached forward, pushing his mana forward, tearing away the enchantment, revealing…

* * *

His brother, Fortov, sat under the mask. The one who had bullied him so often. The one who every restart had pushed a poor innocent girl into a poisonous purple creeper ivy patch.

Zorian growled. "Why Brother!"

Fortov strained against his bonds and spoke, voice full of passion. "You never gave me the chance I needed! I am a natural soul mage, just as you are a natural mind mage, and when Zach first brought all of us into the time loop, I seized the chance for greatness with the aid of Quatach-Ichl to hack the marker and become a looper! I cut out Zach's memories of myself and my friendship with Veyers! Every month, I got vengeance on the girl who once refused me. Now I will be greater than any of you!"

Zorian blinked. "She refused you?"

Fortov nodded. "I said she was cute, and she punched my shoulder and said stop it! She was into me later when I showed supreme power, but I want to be loved for who I am!" Fortov pressed his head to his hands, ashamed by the rejection.

Zorian swept his hand aside. "You fool! Some women" Taiven especially. "Can only show their affection through violence and cruelty. She was coming onto you!"

Fortov looked shocked. "Damn you, damn you all for humiliating me. I will kill you all!"

He started chanting and doing an elaborate piece of soul magic.

Zach dispelled it with a swish of his hand, the spell formula on his hidden magical weapon collapsing under his brutally strong magic.

"Amateur. Soul magic isn't fast enough for combat."

Zorian kicked Fortov, sending him back into the purple creeper patch behind him.

* * *

Veyers was revealed, eyes slitted like dragons, fire curling from the edge of his mouth. The lost scion of a fallen house, with an unstable and dangerous fire ability.

Zorian nodded. "Makes sense, you were the obvious candidate."

Veyers spoke. "I will have my vengeance! You will be destroyed by Noble House Boranova! With the aid of Quatach-Ichl I achieved my destiny and power. My power cut off Zach's memory, and forged a new destiny. And no bond can hold my fire."

He opened his mouth, and a gust of fire rushed out. Alanic stuck his hand out, fire being his specialty, and forced it back into Veyers. Veyers started to glow brighter and brighter, till he exploded.

* * *

Jornak, Veyer's lawyer, appeared.

Zorian nodded. "Makes sense..."

* * *

And there was Zorian.

"Zach!" called out the duplicate. "This is a trick by the primordial. I am the real Zorian! Help me!"

Real Zorian shook his head. "No, I am the real Zorian."

Zorian thrust his will into his clone. There was a momentary clash as he tore through the mind blank, and another clash as he recognized… himself. Less experienced at mind magic though. He broke through his defenses, and forced his duplicate to speak truthfully, even as Zach looked confused.

"I… Was…. Cloned by the primordial before. I never gained any of your foolish mercy, that you did when Zach's idiot soul bonded for you. I will achieve greatness, and none of you will stop me."

He struggled, but failed to escape, his magic held down by Zorian's.

Zorian asked his clone.

"Why did you blank out Zach's memories?"

Zorian shrugged.

"He and Veyers were getting too close. Our love-" An invisible, silent magic missile flew out from Zach, cutting his clone's head off.

"I think we can all agree we've had enough of that."

* * *

He stared at a face he'd never seen before.

"Who are you?"

The man stood up and ranted.

"I am Arnautović, spirit bound mage, sworn to stop you!"

Zorian shook his head. Didn't ring a bell. Cool title though.

He had thought it would be someone he knew…

A brief memory hit him.

"Hey, you're that middle aged man I saw ages ago who Kyron cut in half!"

Curiosity piped up. "Well that was unsatisfying."

* * *

And under the mask Zach appeared.

Zach gave a gasp of surprise in the background, and Alanic slammed a fist forward, sending a dragon of fire to pin him down.

"Why do you traffic and work with invaders!"

Zach screamed, the fire tearing across him, and spoke.

"Eldemar took everything from my family! After the primordial cloned me, I knew I must stop the evil that is Eldemar! You will regret-"

Zorian quick drew, pulling out a pistol and put three rounds in Zach's head. Zach collapsed, dead.

He shook his head. "Some people never learn."

* * *

"Good morning good morning Good Morning!" shouted Kirielle, from under the mask.

Zorian's mouth dropped. "What…. How?"

"I followed you to Cyoria one restart and Quatach-Ichl soul bonded me with Zach. I'm surprised he never mentioned me."

"But… why did you orchestrate the invasion?"

Kirielle stuck her tongue out.

"That's for leaving me with mom all those restarts, you meanie!"

"And Veyers?"

"Zach kept saying that Veyers did better combat magic than me. I showed him!"

* * *

Xvim Chao. The other one faded away- just a simulacrum.

"I knew you were an asshole!" said Zorian.

Xvim shook his head. "Zach was my most promising student. I thought, finally I will be able to give one of the students a proper education, but he slacked off to get drunk with Veyers. After that, I thought I had no other way to fulfil my life ambitions till you came along! I helped the invasion along so you could improve and now- look how far you came. And now, prepare yourself. It's time for the final lesson."

Xvim's bonds broke, and thousands of spheres of light appeared. Marbles. Not again...


	2. Chapter 2, user submissions

This is all the newly generated ones made at request.

* * *

A pair of sad, cat eyes stared up at him.

Nochka Sashal stared up at him, quickly shifting to her small girl form.

Zorian spoke slowly. "You orchestrated your own kidnapping and sacrifice? How are you Red Robe?"

Nochka burst into tears.

"I just wanted a new bike! After I awoke my secret bloodline of primordial power, I kept losing my bike and it made me really sad. I thought if I became the greatest archmage ever I could keep my bike out of the water. I just wanted to ride! Also did I mention I'm actually the reincarnation of the Dragon Below? And the Gods left because i ate them all?"

* * *

"Mother!?" said Zorian, shocked.

There under the mask, body shifted to look more male, was his own mother.

"But why?"

She spoke, voice rapid and accusatory.

"We both knew you were going nowhere, content to stroll along with your life. You should thank me for what I did. I personally reactivated the sovereign gate so that one of your classmates could be strong enough to be useful, and helped him forget some of his less proper friends, and then arranged a meeting between you two. And now look at you. You have archmages waiting on you hand and foot, you're wealthy, I even heard some of the girls are going after you. You're never grateful for what I do for you. You should also try doing more weight training, years of work and you never thought to get a muscle bulking enchantment."

She gestured with her hand, and Kirielle popped out of a dimensional bubble, very confused, and spoke to Zach.

"Would you do me the honor of accepting my daughter as your bride? As a peace payment."

Zorian shook his head. Families. Can't live with them, can't kill them because then your sister gets traumatized.

* * *

A strangely familiar looking 80 year old man.

Zorian's brows knit together in confusion. "You... who are you again?"

"I'm actually you from the future. Turns out real time travel _is_ possible. Zach would have never been able to stop the primordial or the invasion on his own. So I came back to the exact instant after the Sovereign Gate was turned on, broke into it from the outside, soulkilled Veyers because I got tired of him being angsty and annoying, and then played the part of Red Robe. That all indirectly led to the situation where my younger self, that's you, got branded with Zach's soul marker. Which, of course, eventually led to the foiling of Quatach-Ichl's plans outside the Sovereign Gate."

Alanic frowned. "Why did you kill all those people once you got out of the time loop if you were trying to stop the invasion?"

"Time travel shenanigans." Future-Zorian said with a shrug. "I had to do it because I had already done it."

"How did you get a marker?" Zorian interjected. He'd let Alanic do his interrogation later. Besides, the question of how Red Robe had managed to join the loop had always gnawed at him.

"I already had one of course. It never faded away after we escaped the Gate the first time. I managed to modify my marker slightly before starting this whole mess, and that kept the Gate from ever shoving me into your body. The real difficulty was creating a new body for myself at the beginning of each restart. My body wasn't part of the initial template after all. You have no _idea_ how hard True Conjuration is while you're a free floating soul."

Zach, strangely enough, was the one to notice the major issue with Future-Zorian's story.

"Hold up. If it weren't for Red Robe, er, I mean you, the whole situation that led to Zorian becoming a looper probably would have never happened. How could you come back in time to be Red Robe if you hadn't already come back in time to be Red Robe?" Zach paused. "Shit. That didn't come out right. You know what I mean."

"Yes." Future-Zorian nodded. "It's called a causal loop. It really only seems like a paradox when you think of time as a straight line. People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff."

A very real pain began to form in Zorian's temples as he considered _that_. Zorian quickly used his mind magic to force his thoughts away from the spiral of madness that that sentence would inevitably cause. His use of mind magic reminded him of something.

"Wait. How can I be better than you at mind magic if you're me from the future? I fought you after you soulkilled the Aranea. You weren't even better then me back then, and I was still a novice."

"Oh, that. I faked it."

Zach snorted. "That's what she said!"

* * *

A strangely familiar looking 80 year old man.

Zorian's brows knit together in confusion. "You... who are you again?"

The older man spoke. "I'm you from the future. We did a lot of experimentation with divine artifacts in the future and found out it was very much possible with enough divine energy. After the first attempt failed..."

Zorian cut in. "First attempt?!"

Zach pressed his hand to his face, and pulled off his mask, revealing a familiar looking 70 year old man.

"Come on." Said his own, older voice. "You didn't really think it was plausible that Zach of all people would manage to survive this long in the loop on his own? In the original timeline he got mind controlled by the lich a few restarts in. It's Zorians all the way down."


End file.
